…sneak to the mansion, hoping to arrive before it’s too late.

You stop drumming your fingers. Taking them to Captain Washkin may not be an option, but rushing into the inn and swashbuckling them out isn’t really one either. Hopefully they’ll be able to escape and lie low until the pirates all kill each other. You turn from the window and slide down the roof, making your way down to the adjoining building, along the roof tops, and eventually back to the place you climbed up to begin with.

“Hey, what the fuck!?” The shout from the street below drops you to your belly, where the mostly flat roof instantly hides you from any upward facing eyes. After a couple of seconds, you shuffle over to the edge the roof and peek over.

A man stands in the street, looking down the long sloped path that leads to the docks. Another had evidently knocked him down as he ran away from the chaos at the inn, leaving the man picking himself up, looking confused before he notices the growing sense of wrongness building down the road. He continues onwards to investigate. You breathe a sigh of relief and move to the other side of the roof, looking to climb down to the alley instead of the main street, it being a shadier, less travelled part of the island village.

The man you saw was in red and yellow, like the man from the beach, leaving no mistaking which side of the battle they’d land on. Roland’s lot. It was only shouted in the inn briefly as the accusations and the first few chairs began to fly, but you do recall a pirate captain by that name; Captain Roland, who was currently serving as a subordinate captain under Captain Washkin. Still, the connection seems loose as Captain Roland’s colours are different, and he should be elsewhere as well (was it far to the north or far to the south?). You try to recall you notes on all her most notable minions, but not much comes to mind when you think of him; if you knew he’d be here you would have learned more. He’s short, you think, with a temper? It doesn’t help. Most pirates are hardly the most emotionally temperate of people.

A brief swell of screams and violent sounds come from the inn, snapping you back to purpose.

The alley below looks narrow, continuing alongside the buildings back to where the inn rages. The dense woodland lies beyond the dilapidated houses across the street and the mansion lies beyond that, its occasional window light just visible through the still and silent branches. Beneath your feet and hands, the stones and beams look just as shoddy on this side, and the ever growing sounds of frantic screams and angry chaos make for strange accompanying music during you necessarily slow and measured descent. Eventually, after some near falls and careful handling, the dirty alley floor meets the soles of your feet. It’s dark here, but you still rush to slip through a gap between the two buildings opposite, through what may have once been a garden, over a crumbling back wall, and into the thickly grown forest that had long since encroached on the rotting village.

Despite its overgrown nature on the ground, the length of this particular strip of woodland is reasonably thin here; by the middle you can see both the houses of the village left behind and the square outline of the building looming ahead. By the time you carefully pick your way through to the edge that marks the mansions grounds, the noise of the tavern fight and the streets it had no doubt spilled onto had been deadened by foliage. The air carried the occasional wailing scream or rage filled battle cry, combatants indistinguishable, but if they aren’t enough to alert the mansions occupants on their own, the men running up the path towards the front door will probably do the trick.

You watch their progress from behind your tree as they run up a gravel lined path to the mansions front door. Men meander out hesitantly to meet them, confused and looking for answers. They parlay in a long strip of light that streams from the front entrance, staining the gravel yellow and highlighting the guard: a vast wall of muscle that plays disinterested, yet cranes his neck to hear the news.

Time is no longer on your side. It had turned against you the moment you let slip the deadly drizzle that turned a sick party into a grizzly bloodbath.

You follow the tree line that circles the mansions grounds, careful to stay hidden from the confused men as you look for means into the building. It’s vast. Not as vast as some in Coronac and nowhere near the majority back in Losh, but far bigger than you would expect on such a relatively small island. It has two tall floors, one on ground level and one above, and stretches wide, making an impressive facade and dragging out your hunched run as you try to round it, looking for any ingress. Lights appear in windows, faces too as the sounds outside grow. Plain lawn begins to give way to overgrown bushes as what was once a garden sits at the far side of the mansion. Rather than hinder you, it actually make your movement easier; hiding you behind bushes as you stick to the trees and keep an eye on the building.

Behind some bushes, ferns, and smattering of what may have once been orchids before the summer sun got to them, you reach a place where you can see the far back corner of the building in all its glory. You expected the back of the place to look like the front; a relatively straight flat slab with the exception of the slight inset of a front doorway. Instead it bulges out, cutting off your view of the rest with a series of protrusions, like steps laid on their side. The furthest extension you can see looks to be in the middle and houses an open window on the second floor, leading into a room glowing with candle light. It’s not the only window. Even closer, on another protrusion, is a balcony with a set of open doors. And they contain no light or activity. Closer still, on the flat side of the building, is an old drain pipe that leads right up to the roof. If you could...

“Fire! Fire in the village!” The voice is distant, but not overly so, set higher than you would have expected. You can’t confirm its claims, but its source instantly becomes clear when you see a man jogging along the roof top towards you, rounding the corner of the buildings front, jogging the length of the side presented to you, and rounding the buildings back corner. There must be some low wall up there as he seems to be standing far lower than the edge of the roof you can see, leaving him looking like a puppet out of some play put on for you. After disappearing briefly by moving away from you, he reappears further down, on one of the ‘steps’ of the buildings jutting structure, when he lean over the wall above the dark balcony and looks further on, towards the window lit by candle light.

“Captain! We got a fire in the village!”

Your heart skips a beat when a figure leans out of the lit window. It’s a woman. A woman with long blond hair.

“What!?”

You stay still, watching from the dark, heart beating fast.

“We got fires in the village mam! I can see it over the trees!” You see a moment’s hesitation, her hands drumming on the window sill.

“Keep watch! Shout if it spreads to the woods!” The figure disappears, chased by the “Ay Captain!” from above.

That was quite satisfyingly convenient; talk about being in the right place at the right time! You could kiss whoever started that fire, if you did not wish them roasted in its flames as well! The man on the roof rushes back to the front and with a final good look around the woods and garden on this side, he trots off further up the buildings frontage. The old drain pipe remains and option, but the agitated guard somewhere above, who by now is more watchful than ever and possibly not alone, gives you pause. As your recent trip to the inn showed you, there are few places to hide on a roof. Besides, with Captain Washkin’s sudden appearance comes new opportunity. The window to her room lies open and below that is a stubby roof, wide enough to stand on and jutting out where the bottom floor reaches just a little further than the one above it. It runs from the lit window facing you, around the inner corner of the building, then toward you, along the mansions back face, ending near the corner containing the closer balcony. At the end of the little roof, almost quivering in the moonlight, is the beautiful sight of an old decorative pot and its contents: a climbing invasion of Ivy.

The plant looks fairly dead and quite dry, but it runs up what appears to be a wooden trellis fixed to the side of the wall. Once up, it would be a clear path to the window, although... The tiles on the roof ledge do look loud: each a rounded thing of pot, layered on top of each other and ready to clink with the slightest pressure. You would also need to pass several narrow windows leading into the balcony room, blocking the moonlight that shines through them, but each of those windows looks quite dark and empty, with only your targets lit and inviting. It’s too good of an opportunity to pass up anyway, so you slip from the trees and through the overgrown garden, aiming for the side of the house as quick and quiet as you can.

The Ivy is actually very thin, close to, but the trellis looks sound. The thick cross hatch of wood is bolted to the wall and a few ivy shaking tugs tell you that won’t change any time soon. Climbing it is easy, you’ve seen ladders less suited to the job, and before you know it you’re on the small roof, gingerly making your way to the window. The tiles do clink and settle on occasion but not nearly so much as you feared, and while you don’t exactly tarry at the windows, what little you see through them is darkness split by a distant column of light from a half open door. No shouts, no raised alarms. The moonlight makes putting one foot before the other simple and safe and before you know it you find yourself rounding the inner corner and creeping towards the window.

With a cautious lean, you look inside with only half an eye, squinting against the glowing candle light to see what awaits you.

It’s nothing; the room is empty.

Well, empty of people. It’s lined with wardrobes and cupboards and contains an empty fireplace before a large round table, an even larger double bed, and two doors: one across from you and one in the wall to your left. It even has piles of what look like dirty clothes on the floor, a few papers and maps strewn about, and a half drunk tankard on the table.

You get a cold shiver of dread when you consider what to do next. Where is she? Was she drawn away to supervise putting out the fire? What will she do when she finds the riot? It all doesn’t seem so fortuitous now; she could have slipped out of your grasp already. Drumming you fingers on the wall, you calm yourself with the notion that there is nothing you can do about that now. You should assume she will return, to continue whatever business she was doing or to sleep. You have time to wait if you can hide.

Waiting outside the window doesn’t seem safe, considering the roof guards updates seem normally shouted at this spot, and a wardrobe inside catches your eye, large, wide and finely crafted. Three draws makeup the bottom half, while large twin doors make up the top, and it stands off the floor on stubby little legs. While you could possibly hide underneath at a pinch, inside would be better, assuming it’s not full.

Making doubly sure that no footsteps are approaching the rooms inner doors, you dart in and rush to the wardrobe, throwing the doors open. When all you see are hanging tunics and dresses, you ready to clamber within and arrange them all, turning them by their hangers to cover you like a curtain. It should be enough to hide behind should they open it, and you doubt it will tangle you should the need to spring forth arise. Still, you hesitate, with one foot on the lip of the artful wooden box.

You cast your eyes about the empty room. The bed is messy, and needlessly large, matched by the piles of clothes about the floor. You look at one and see on top of it something like a dress makers piece; material the shape of a woman’s torso, with no skirt bottom. You’d think it half made were it not so lacy as to be see though, and it possess silted holes at the bosom and crotch. It’s irrelevant, but your eyes linger on it longer than it deserves, with accompanying images of what a woman might look like in it.

‘Once a whore, always a whore’, you suppose.

More eye-catching is the table, pushed up against the side of the room. It’s large enough that you had to move around it when passing from window to wardrobe, and dwarfed on its surface are two pewter mugs, filled with wine, one half full, the other half empty. The vial of poison sits quietly upon your thigh.

With your leg bent as it is, it’s going to be tricky to get the vial out from the leather strap through your pocket slit. When squatting in the tight space of the wardrobe, getting it out would be even harder. If you got it out now, you could put it in the cups or on your blade…

Footsteps sound outside, muffled but closing, and the third option of simple getting in the wardrobe as soon as you can comes to mine. What if they don’t drink? What if the wrong person does? A loud but distant explosion sounds, radiating through the mansion with a dull thud, and cracking though the open window as it rides the night air. That sounded like an inns reserves of lantern oil and **** catching fire!

You’re not familiar with such a sound, but you’re confident in your educated guess.

The footsteps stop before picking up the pace towards you.